You said every iPhone user would switch to Apple if they were a carrier. I have an iPhone and wouldn't switch unless they offered something better than I have.

The only term you could argue about in that line you quoted in the part about competitive pricing. Sprint offers unlimited, unthrottled, and no cap data which you can see for yourself. What do you consider to be a competitive price for unlimited data? $80? $50? $30 Free? What is competitive to me might seem expensive to you so that is very subjective but you cannot dispute the unlimited data terms since these are verifiable.

I also asked what carrier you use and how much you pay. Perhaps you overlooked that in your reply. Are you using an iPhone 5s, 5c, 5? Just curious to know if you have an LTE iPhone model and use LTE.

I'd hope that we'd get back to having four sustainable national companies. Industrialized economies with just three mobile operators almost invariably have huge rates and horrible service. You need the competition.

T-Mobile/Sprint is slightly less offensive than T-Mobile/AT&T, which, combined with the market and regulatory situation at the time would have likely left us with just TWO national networks. Still, it locks us into three if we're lucky, and what's more involves the worse run company taking over the better run one, an unfortunate outcome indeed when T-Mobile really seems to be turning itself around and even Sprint has the licenses and the capital to turn out a good network, if only it had the competence.

T-Mobile acquired MetroPCS, a CDMA carrier, for its subscribers and spectrum. Unlike Sprint with Nextel, it has been doing an incredible job at refarming spectrum and offering competitive GSM plans while supporting existing CDMA customers and encouraging them to move to GSM. So, a CDMA and a GSM carrier can merge, but if Sprint is involved I expect a disaster. They just can't execute anything correctly.

T-Mobile didn't turn down AT&T, the deal fell apart due to regulatory hurdles. T-Mo is in an arguably better position than it was then so I can't see why 20 billion would be enough when there was a 40 billion offer not too long ago.

I'm a current Sprint customer and have begun watching the calendar for when my contract is up.

I can't speak to how well Sprint itself is run or the quality of it's network, but I can tell you that it should kick the local franchisee Swiftel to the curb ASAP. For whatever reason, Sprint never officially built a single company store in NW Iowa or the eastern part of South Dakota. Instead, it franchised it's name and business to a municipal utility owned by the city of Brookings, SD.

I wish I'd known all this before I committed to signing up with Sprint. At the time, I had terrible monthly bills with AT&T and before that with Verizon. Sprint offered an attractive deal with unlimited everything for a pittance compared to what I'd been paying the other two before (I'm a shameless data hog and the options for doing much of my surfing via WiFi are very limited here).

Verizon was always damn near perfect for service. AT&T, not so much. Swiftel/Sprint: UGH!

I have been with Swiftel/Sprint for over a year and right at the start of my contract I was being promised that while the service was a bit slow, it would improve dramatically with the impending rollout of LTE by last spring. Then it was pushed back to last summer.

When I spoke to Sprint on the customer service number, I was assured that by the end of this year LTE would finally be up and running. I then spoke with a Swiftel rep and his response was that there were no such plans at any point in the future. I asked how Swiftel could renege on a promise made by Sprint, a company that Swiftel had signed a contract with? After a forced and labored lengthy explanation, it boiled down to cash. Sprint had not offered to pay for the upgrades necessary for LTE and Swiftel wasn't the least bit interested in offering it. When I pressed the point, the rep added a snide swipe to Sprint by postulating that while Sprint was pissing away money, Swiftel was in business to make money and if that meant denying some parts of the Sprint promise to the customers, Swiftel lost no sleep over it. I commented that it was awfully brazen and felt it was time to file a complaint with the FCC and the State Utility Commission as well. He sneered (yes, he really did) that I could waste all the time I wanted complaining. As far as Swiftel was concerned, because it was a "municipal utility" instead of a full-fledged telecom, the laws that governed Sprint, AT&T or Verizon didn't apply in any way to it. The last thing he said before hanging up was if I was so unhappy with the (pitiful) levels of service, I could just pay the ETF, surrender my iPhone and be on my way back to paying higher monthly fees.

Of course, you realize, those were fighting words.

Shame on me for not researching everything before I signed the contract. If Aio had been around at that time, I would have happily went with them as I'd be paying exactly the same amount as I do now and my friends that have it can't quit raving about how great the service is -- with LTE to boot!

They wouldn’t NEED anyone else’s network if they had their own. Everyone with an iPhone would jump ship to Apple’s network.

My company provides iPhones to sales and IT personnel, but they wouldn't switch from Verizon to TMobile if Apple bought them. We would probably switch to Android phones or Nokia Windows phones. Plus what about the rest of the world. Carriers would want to dump iPhone just because they would see Apple as a potential competitor.

Because Apple wouldn't cap, throttle, overcharge, or otherwise treat their users like Schmidt.

One of the great things about the iPhone is how one model can handle Verizon, ATT, and Tmobile networks. This is the first step to providing a virtual SIM that would allow users to switch carriers whenever they want. I't might also allow them to tailor plans for different regions of the country, to automatically switch carriers if service is unavailable or poor.

One of the great things about the iPhone is how one model can handle Verizon, ATT, and Tmobile networks.

Problem is, one model can’t handle all the LTE. When that changes, I figure we’ll see Apple take a step away from the telecoms before they take a step away from Apple (their current war on subsidies comes to mind).

If you say so. I still find iCloud to be frustratingly slow. And Apple's not-long-past history hasn't exactly been littered with successful service offerings.

And even if my experience of iCloud is isolated, you didn't address the questioning of your cost and tiering claims. What makes you so sure that Apple would offer cost comparative services, or unlimited everything?

And what "better category" data and voice connection do you think Apple would be willing/able to offer, outside of their known competencies?

Nothing wrong with a bit of wishful thinking, but this is sounding excessively blue sky "Apple can do anything because they're Apple" to me.

Usage Limitations: Other plans may receive prioritized bandwidth availability. Streaming video speeds may be limited to 1 Mbps. Sprint may terminate service if off-network roaming usage in a month exceeds: (1) 800 min. or a majority of min.; or (2) 100 MB or a majority of KB. Prohibited network use rules apply.

Hmm. “Prohibited network use rules,” you say… so you also can’t do this:

Sprint data services are provided solely for purposes of web surfing, sending and receiving email, photographs and other similar messaging activities, and the non-continuous streaming of videos, downloading of files or on line gaming. Our data services may not be used: (i) to generate excessive amounts of Internet traffic through the continuous, unattended streaming, downloading or uploading of videos or other files or to operate hosting services including, but not limited to, web or gaming hosting; (ii) to maintain continuous active network connections to the Internet such as through a web camera or machine-to-machine connections that do not involve active participation by a person; (vi) for an activity that connects any device to Personal Computers (including without limitation, laptops), or other equipment for the purpose of transmitting wireless data over the network (unless customer is using a plan designated for such usage); or (vi) for any other reason that, in our sole discretion violates our policy of providing service for individual use. Unlimited Use Plans. If you subscribe to rate plans, services or features that are described as unlimited, you should be aware that such "unlimited" plans are subject to these Sprint Prohibited Network Uses.

Bolding mine, except for the “Unlimited Use Plans” title. First bolding refers to tethering, which this entire time I’ve treated as an understood ‘not unlimited’ factor, because no one is stupid enough to think that tethering would be unlimited on any of these telecom’s plans. Apple wouldn’t care.That’s part of my claim here. Were they to have their own network, they’d set it apart by having no fine print to their service claims other than re-delineating what you can’t do on their networks because it’s already illegal in whatever country you live.

That’s better than Sprint, at least, but is of course not “unlimited”. Its terms are otherwise similar to Sprint.

You’ll notice that I cut out the obvious ones (can’t use for constant requests to servers, can’t use as an e-mail service, etc.) because those are illegal in the first place and don’t matter to end-users. The rest? That’s becoming ever more standard use case stuff.

Straight Talk’s “unlimited” claims are even more stringent, but they’re a budget provider, so the stringency is to be expected. Still calling it “unlimited”, however, isn’t.

Apple wouldn’t care.That’s part of my claim here. Were they to have their own network, they
’d set it apart by having no fine print to their service claims

Pure speculation, and unconvincing. Apple throttle many of their services; iCloud storage, Photo Stream traffic, and a new x.0 iOS release is always slow to download at zero hour. Apple are subject to the exact same limitations and cost considerations as any other carrier. This idea that they'd spring magic dust and everything would be limitless is a fantasy.

But that's my point. Apple don't have limitless resources and would hit the exact same bandwidth and traffic issues that other carriers do. They also won't invest billions of dollars for no discernible advantage or profit, so their deals would be cost comparable with what's already out there.

Unless you can point out a specific advantage, technological or in some other way competitive that Apple would have over incumbent carriers in providing cell and data service then these claims that Apple could offer a better service are just finger in the wind guesses.

For these reasons I don't think Apple will do this. They may have considered it in the past, but things have changed as the iPhone business has grown bigger, more international, and multi-tentacled. The only obvious advantage to them is integration and simplicity for users, but with such a huge downside of competing with their partners in an area outside of core competency it would be a crazy step. Even if they just tried to do it in the US it would put the frighteners on carriers around the world and massively jeopardise Apple's entire iPhone operation.

If only it was interactive. These maps don’t say much. Being able to take away everything but one company’s would go a long way in helping people figure out if they’ll get service where they live.

And who cares about competing companies?! I want to know the protocols of the towers.

There are probably better sources available, but I'm not in that industry. It's entirely possible that future "white space" spectrum auctions may provide additional opportunities for companies like Apple that we are not yet aware.